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Tuesday, May 31, 2005

We get up every morning and put our clothes on. For some of us it’s a major undertaking and some of us are much more casual. In some cases we are still wearing our clothes from last night and/or last week and no thought at all is going into it. Whatever the case, when we get up we are already wearing our personality. That’s the crowded mobile home we move about in here. The personality is another kind of body, just as it is another suit of clothes, just like your body is a suit of clothes that makes you visible here. If you take it off you disappear.

Inside these vehicles are various drivers with different skills looking to operate the machinery for different purposes, at different times and to different ends. All sorts of names have been given to these different characters. In some cases there’s a bit of redundancy and in other cases the naming is according to a particular world view that is only relevant in that world view. We‘ve all heard the words ‘ego’, super-ego’, ‘libido’ and ‘id’. We know about the heart and the mind. We know about the brain and the mind, or rather, we don’t know. You’ve got reason and desire. You’ve got sex and Love. You’ve got the personality and you’ve got The Self. Or have they got you? And is there a ‘you’ apart from all of these; even including The Self?

The purpose of that last paragraph was confusion. Sometimes in life the purpose may not be confusion even though the result is. Sometimes we can believe we are doing the right thing and still hurt a lot of people. People who love their country on a certain level; people who attend parades and whose hearts swell when the band goes by, who get moist in the eyes at the memory of the loss of comrades in foreign wars- comrades they may well have never met and wars they may well have never fought in- have an idea about things and for them that idea is real. There are sharper minds about who know how to play off of emotions like this. There are industries that study the human makeup and test and predict humanity and its actions according to various stimuli.

Some of these industries want to sell products and they want to know how to make that product as appealing as possible. Sometimes, depending on the product, fear will make it more appealing than putting a naked woman on the hood of a car. Some of these industries want to sell an idea because that idea will generate a fealty that allows for control that in some fashion or another confers power and money upon those representing it. The truth is not always (if ever) sufficient to the greatest possibilities of sale. Often the truth is harmful to sales. Lies become very necessary to impress upon the customer the need for the product. Consider the NRA, gun sales, political power, lies, money, fear; everything but a naked woman on the hood of a car (unless it’s hunting season and she’s tied there for display) and you see where a product and an idea come together for a variety of reasons. This is just an example- I’ve nothing more than that in mind at the moment. But you could carry the concept out, much farther out than I have.

I don’t remember the actual details but I understand that Socrates once demonstrated a complicated physics equation by asking an ignorant youth the right questions in a certain sequence.

Many of us work in industries that connect to all manner of things at a distance. Many of us would be surprised to find that something we made was used to kill somebody thousands of miles away. Many of us would be very surprised to know that money generated from a product we made was used to enslave people at a distance. We might be even more surprised to find that an ugly emotion that rose up inside of us was combined with a similar emotion in the chests of thousands of people and used to destroy a nation at a distance; was used to fuel the hate in the hearts of soldiers who were fighting for an ideal that did not, in fact, exist. Maybe you can see, by working at right angles to this, and thinking of yourself as being both Socrates and that boy and factoring in some or all of the portions of ourselves that I mentioned in the beginning (things like the personality and the ego and the rest) how the whole system of death and rebirth and Karma and Heaven and Hell and God and The Devil can get so complicated and take such a terrific long time to work out (if ever).

Maybe you can see how the fire of desire burns on forever and consumes everything it touches just like an ordinary fire turns wood into ash and is never filled and never satisfied. Maybe you might then see how conscious immortality had something to do with controlling the fire of desire- or in re-focusing the object of desire. Maybe you could then see this world as a foundry that is forever turning out products whose by-products are always sorrow and suffering. Maybe you could see that this world exists for specific reasons and that those reasons are not at all what you may have originally thought they were.

“Oh why the Hell not, after all, you only live once.” You ever hear that before? Did it ever occur to you how insane that sounds regardless of whether it is true or not? Are you trying to understand what I mean by that? Do you realize that means you are crazy?

Well now, you’ve got these desires and groups of people share some of them, nations too. The leaders of these nations whip up those desires- at the behest of those who intend to profit in the aftermath- into a war against a perceived enemy who is said to be opposed to the fulfillment of those desires. England worked this sort of a thing for hundreds and hundreds of years in India and Africa and China and, hey, they’re the good guys right? Today in the very large nations of Australia-New Zealand and Canada they have a certain fealty to the Queen. Does anyone out there have a clear idea of what that means? Do you think that America actually was the winner in the American Revolution?

It’s possible that much of what you think is wrong. Do you think that Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela had an easy time of it? Did you know that Dick Cheney fought to keep Nelson Mandela in prison? Did you know that Israel was one of the South African apartheid government’s biggest friends and torture instructors? Palestine today is in apartheid. Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?

I’m not here to take sides on these issues. I’m just passing through. This place is always like this here; full of war and disorder, greed and lies- slander and murder. I’m just hoping you think. Think about it. What are you supposed to be doing here? Are you supposed to be making products; fighting in wars, wanting things that you don’t want, fighting with yourself and others for the benefit of interests of whom you are unaware?

Are you supposed to live quietly under the surface, bearing it all, fixing your attention on God and working upon your salvation? That’s not a bad one. Are you supposed to be struggling for those who are imprisoned and enslaved; being tortured and killed? Are you meant to be an example?

Do you think of God and The Devil as external forces and yourself as yet another thing and all of those who surround you as yet something else again? Whose hands are God’s hands? Whose hands are The Devils hands? What is God? Who is The Devil? Who are you? Whenever either God or The Devil wants to get something done they pick one of us. There isn’t anybody else; maybe the weather occasionally sure. It’s remarkable that most people don’t’ know what’s good and what’s bad. They only know what they are told.

So maybe all the good guys aren’t rich and famous and powerful and working to help us all night and day. Maybe all the bad guys aren’t in prison or leading insurgent armies. Maybe everyone in prison isn’t a bad guy and everybody who’s putting them there isn’t a good guy. Maybe everything good and evil is inside us at the same time as it is outside of us. It is life that poses the circumstances in which we discover the difference; if ever we do. We are the secret. We are God’s secret and God is our bank.

When we make peace with ourselves, no one in the whole world can successfully oppose us. You have seen this in the lives of the people I have mentioned. Even when it cost them their lives they lost nothing, whereas- as the Bible tells you, “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul.” What we think is good is not necessarily good. What we want is not necessarily worth having. What the world is trumpeting is usually not worth hearing. Who is living inside you? Who is advising you? Where are you going? Really, just where do you think you are going right this minute, eventually- all the time, directly, indirectly... where are you going? Where are you?

Sunday, May 29, 2005

One of the strange ironies of life is in how the simplicity becomes so complex. Even stranger is how we can go through permutations of the same thing over and over again and continue to be deceived, not just day after day but lifetime after lifetime.

We have the mind and the emotions, reason and desire. The emotions are in the mind though we seem to experience them in the chest and visceral area; perhaps other locations as well. Why is it that we don’t know what’s going on when it is going on right in front of us? Why can we not step outside of ourselves, step apart from our feelings and reactions and view with dispassion our circumstances and surroundings? Why do people fail to see; refuse to see, insist and prohibit, control and punish, demand and destroy?

Although there are certainly more than 2 worlds, for the sake of argument, I am going to deal with two. There is also very good argument that no worlds exist at all; that everything is mind- but lets not concern ourselves with that right now.

Two worlds; one is ruled by what we would call The Devil and his/her agents. The other is ruled by God and his/her agents. One is the deceiver into bondage and the other is the liberator from. They are both the same force. This is why, in The Lord’s Prayer we ask, “Lead us not into temptation.” The worlds interpenetrate and may simultaneously be the same place while appearing to be one or the other to those so disposed. As I have said before; The Devil is God in the way that he appears to the wicked. You are of course familiar with the phrase, “Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s.”

Donald Trump; Rupert Murdock, David Rockefeller, The Bush Family, members of Bilderberger, scads of celebrities and pornographers of all stripes, merchants, stockbrokers, doctors, priests and lawyers- the list is enormous... all work for some aspect of The Devil’s corporation- “you got to serve somebody”. This corporation is a living thing and it is sensitive to your every thought, word and deed. It is a living web with a spider at the center that is intimately aware of everything that takes place upon the web. One of the names for this web is The Sub-Matrix. Some might call it Maya.

One often sees images of Buddha within a lotus, upon a lily pad. The root of the plant rises out of the murk below yet rests above it, untouched. We have heard the phrase, “in the world but not of it.” We have heard some form of the phrase, “Where your heart is, there your treasures are also.” We’ve heard a lot of things, seen a lot of movies; live in a movie but don’t recognize the fact; watch life unfold in its timeless outworking of the same moral tale within a million rooms where the furniture is different. There is only one life.

We’ve heard some permutation of the phrase about how wide the highway is that leads to destruction and how narrow is the path that leads to life and how few there are that find their way. We actually see it taking place in front of us; hear about it on the radio, see it on TV, watch it passing in the streets, live surrounded by it and just don’t seem to see it or make the connection.

We have observed History and seen what terrible things leaders have done with the support of the people and often without the support of the people or with the support of some of the people. It is very clear what was right and wrong. The exact same thing is taking place in front of us right now but we don’t see it. The behavior of people in private and in public and upon the highways; in the workplace, at recreational pursuits and in organized forms of worship display many a peculiar pathology; one thing we often see is that people are not paying attention even while they appear to be paying attention.

People do not see, they do not recognize, interpret or compute anything except in terms of what they value and what they want. They have formed themselves into advertisements for what they want. Why do they want it? They don’t know. It’s going to hurt though.

If one observes life impartially and objectively for any length of time they come to inescapable conclusions but... Unless one is honest with themselves and interested in the truth regardless of what it may require of them, they won’t see truth; but that should go without saying.

It becomes patently clear that life is a game; a movie, a labyrinth-maze, a puzzle, a living Rubic’s Cube- something designed for discovery and solution. Most people stop looking or inquiring once they have found what they think they were looking for. At one end of life you have a force with a pitchfork prodding you on toward someone you can’t see waiting in the heights beyond.

The whole psycho drama is God playing hide and seek with himself; you looking for yourself. All romantic love is- is about you thinking you have discovered yourself in another- and boy that hurts too. None of this would work without the whole of it interacting as it does. One of the biggest concerns and sources of confusion is, “Why does it hurt?” We’ve heard that pain is educative. It is also instructive. Perhaps you are going the wrong way? Pain may well be a warning. Everything is designed to lead you to freedom and bliss. Most everyone fights the process. That is why it hurts. Sanity is actually insane. What appears to be madness is sanity. Nothing is worth having- you will lose it all. Everyone will betray you. You will be dishonored and slandered if you tell the truth and you will be honored and elevated if you lie, steal, murder and betray. I’m laughing as I write this.

But it’s so and you can’t really defend yourself against any of it. Wise souls have uniformly kept out of sight knowing this. Of course, sometimes you have a job and there is no avoiding the consequences. But, it is a game; the game is fixed and so, no matter what appears to happen you are going to be fine, depending. Depending on what I shouldn’t have to explain.

Yes Sodom and Gomorrah are Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Yes, the things you saw on that bad acid trip were actually there; every bit as much as what you see otherwise. The problem is in your perception of where the power lies. It appears to reside outside you and so you give fealty and allegiance to the infernal side of the power equation. It actually resides within you and so nothing has any power over you. So it comes down to this; what do you need to convince you? As I mentioned about Ceremonial Magic in a recent piece- it is all about convincing yourself that you are sincere. It is all about convincing yourself that something is real. Do you need to be raised from the dead? Do you need to be cured of cancer? Do you have to go to prison or be brought in front of Pilate? What do you need?

Do you need to be convinced of the ramifications of being rich; or beautiful, or powerful, or celebrated? Do you need to ‘be’ Elvis? His doing it wasn’t enough? You are going to get what you need. And it is going to hurt.

Not the slightest detail is overlooked. Every single event in your life, no matter how insignificant it may appear, is a personal interaction between you and God. Your turn will come, your time will come; you don’t need to hurt yourself in the frenzy of persistence to possess or achieve. Learn to be graceful. Learn to dance. Most importantly remember that you are always on camera. Would that change the things you say and do if it were a fact? It is...

Friday, May 27, 2005

When you think of all the books on all the shelves in all the rooms in the world; when you think of the seed ideas of all the books unwritten and yet to be written and all the books long gone; books written by forgotten Shakespeares and Miltons from long gone Atlantis’s and apostles of teachers who went before they started recording it all again this time; when you think about all those ideas and all those words... well...

I remember sitting on a wide empty beach and letting handfuls of sand run away through my fingers.

This morning I was reading through some information about various areas of Pure Land Buddhism; or Amitabha Buddhism- for which I have a certain natal, spiritual affinity and I have noticed as I have gone on reading, on days before this as well as today that something which I understand in a very simple way has a capacity shared with every other idea- to become increasingly more complex. There’s a chant for this and a chant for that. There are so many directions to bow in while repeating something so many times for so many days and the permutations just logarithmically extend.

Some years ago I was fascinated with the occult and Hermetic Science and that led me to Ceremonial Magic and far more than I could go into here. At one point it occurred to me that all of the trappings of Ceremonial Magic, all the rituals and routines and all of the complexities, shared a common reality with all forms of theurgy and religious ritual from the most primitive level to the most intricate and that was... it all happens in your mind. The whole point of drawing a magic circle and dressing up in ceremonial robes and waving your wand and repeating those words was just to convince your mind that you were serious.

That’s what fasting is about; what all austerities are about, what all denial and intense aspiration are about. They are about convincing your mind that you are sincere. The idea that we can impress God with anything is absurd; this mostly arises because we think of God as being a larger version of ourselves, complete with similar prejudices and more powerful emotions. There is a powerful message here regarding the propensity we all have for lying to ourselves.

There was a time when I would have made a great effort to learn the ins and outs of a given path. In fact, I applied myself diligently to a number of them. This usually trailed off or plateau-ed because I somehow knew I wasn’t going to understand the ocean by counting the grains of sand on the beach; much less memorizing them. There’ve been some great efforts at remembering and categorizing; certainly Confucius would be an example. You can strike a golden spike where that cat wailed but you won’t have gone over the rim of the bowl that contains us as surely as our definitions do.

Somehow it just doesn’t seem to me that knowing all of this stuff is important. I feel somehow that I will know who all of those beings in the tapestry are without having to memorize what their names and functions are. I should add a small disclaimer here. It behooves anyone heading into unknown territory to take a map and to familiarize themselves with what information may exist concerning the environment and the inhabitants. But that would be common sense.

So, I expect these books are good for something if they provide an outline or some sort of a guide in the preliminary portion of out journey. However, the time will come when you have moved beyond the dimensions of the chart. That is when you head into that special area that has only to do with you. That is that period when you are coming on to breaking through from the personal into the cosmic. As you are discovering, you are being changed. You die and become something entirely new while all the time your mind is focused upon something to the extent that you are unaware of what is actually taking place until it has already happened. I, for one, appreciate that.

How many times I have found myself shaking my head and laughing as I see the hierarchy of the Catholic Church on some special day of the year; or any church for that matter- but they are the biggest in the area of display- got all up in these outrageous outfits with miters and scepters and jewels dripping like they were a human Las Vegas light show or some kind of Druid Christmas Tree; giving a whole new ironic meaning to the phrase of being, “all dressed up with nowhere to go.” You see it everywhere. You see it in Buddhism and Hinduism and some more and some less than others. The Muslims are less into the glitter but they make up for what absurdity they lack in that dimension with the addition of Sharia and other less than human friendly devices. I suppose all of this came out of books too.

I love books. I read for pleasure and that would include learning as well because it is a pleasure for me to learn. Sometimes I will read something and a thrill will go up my spine because an electrical connection has been made between something I am reading and an actual archetypal location where the pure idea resides. It’s a sex act.

The more I look around me the more it becomes clear that this world is a product of bad information; or perhaps a product of good information misunderstood or just missed. Now a lot of this bad information is transmitted as a result of bad parenting. A lot of bad information comes out of the libraries of rationalizations made available for our use when we need to justify acting on our appetites and desires; the ego is the librarian here- it is his/her good pleasure to go and find the right volume and open it to the right page. Fear is the other main motivator and there you have a library full of reactions. Something tells me that all fear is based on a lie and therefore no reaction is required, nor shall any fearful thing approach the one that holds that light which illuminates all things; showcasing the real and dissolving the unreal.

The varieties of advertising are amazing; the hot honey leering from the billboard- all that leg, those eyes and the drink in the beaded glass... where’s she inviting you to? Is there such a place? And the guy dressed up like he’s headed for The Hookers Ball in San Francisco; he’s got The Bible in one hand and the collection plate in another and where is he inviting you to? Is there such a place? They’ve got thousands of people in Banana Republic suits driving new Land Rovers all over the African continent looking for photo-ops for their Hunger Porn Industry. “Now I want you to brush some sugar water on the kid’s eyes, we need more flies. Now you come over here and sit on Daddy’s lap and say ‘cheese’.”

All those books and lifetimes; all the adventures and opportunities that eventually end or become exhausted; the endless movie reel- we make whatever sense we intend to make out of it depending on what we want. And we sure do want... endless thirst.

I believe all you have to do is ask with real sincerity and believe regardless of appearances; the appearances are changing immediately in accommodation of your belief whether you can see it or not- that is the job of faith to sustain you through the transition. You’ll attract a real teacher and from that point on- no worries. If you’re going into business you’re going to need some books. If you’re going out of business you can close those books. The only book any of us ever need to read is open in front of us at all times. Depending on what you have trained yourself to see depends on what you are going to experience and whether you are going to be manipulated by events.

Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Well now... I already put it off for a day. You get into a groove of doing and then you get into a groove of not doing; or a groove of doing something else and then you try to groove on back over but you’ve in another groove and sand has drifted into the old groove that had been kept clean by your regular visits and so there’s a degree of friction that was not there before and funny thing, now its got me thinking...

People ask me sometimes how some things come so easily to me when it is so hard for them. Well, the answer is that it is not easy for me, not in the sense that they understand it. Let’s say that I get up in the morning and it is my custom to go and jump into a cold lake first thing. Let’s say that you are visiting with me and I invite you to join me; or, on the evening before- perhaps emboldened by a few glasses of wine- you invite yourself along.

The next morning arrives. Since it is my custom to go and jump into the lake I get up and do that. It is not your custom and so you find whatever rationale is necessary to not accompany me. Or, perhaps you are one of those types that cannot afford to show any sign of weakness and, despite your very real reluctance to do this, you accompany me.

There is a difference between us. I’m very much used to jumping into the lake. However, a certain portion of me does not want to jump into this lake any more than you do. It just so happens that another part of my nature prevails over this reticent aspect. You have no track record in this regard and so it will be harder for you. It has something to do with faith and it has something to do with memory and, of course, it probably has something to do with a whole lot of things I could start listing as I lose connection with my point and wind up in the middle of the ocean wondering what it was I set out to do, or say, or...

I know that I will feel better if I jump into that lake. I know I will feel bad if I eat that juicy hamburger; of course you might not- but I will. I know that, as much as I might want to do certain things in certain parts of my nature, that these things will harm me. It might have taken me a hundred, a thousand or a hundred thousand times to get this clear and... that’s where we all are really. We are all at some point of deciding what we want to think and say and do. We’ve got our reasons. We’ve got our arguments; our excuses, our justifications. We’ve got our charts and diagrams. We can stand there and quote those facts and figures just like Ross Perot; stopping every now and then to look over our shoulders to see if those Black Panthers who intend to assassinate us have arrived from Canada yet.

We’ve got it all rationalized. Everything we planted has grown up around whatever was there to begin with. Just like in a real garden the weeds have insinuated themselves among the flowers and we can’t tell the difference. We can’t tell even if we are lying or not because it looks real to us, even though it isn’t real at all. And in many cases it is a comfortable thing for the moment. Who wants to change it? Who wants the truth badly enough to leave the comfort of the warm bed and jump into the cold lake? Who wants the truth enough to sacrifice their cherished illusions? The story of Gautama Buddha is very enlightening (irony alert) in this regard.

We could think of the truth as a fire as well. Some people want to sit close enough to stay warm, some sit closer and then closer still and some walk right into the fire. You can see them smiling in the coals if you look close enough with the right perspective. But what if it isn’t the fire of truth? What if it is another fire? Certainly a huge segment of the population walks quite willingly into other fires and, more often than not, is not even concerned about whether it is the fire of truth.

The riotous assumptions of youth; the idea that one will stay strong and healthy forever, that they will always be attractive to others and that others will always be at hand, that they can eat what they want and do what they want and laugh in the face of death and mock those older than themselves- making fun of the very situation they move relentlessly toward; this ‘me first’ culture. This powerful, powerful pull for flashing phenomena, ghost dancing neon, soft curves, hard desire, crispy juicy flesh...ah the supermarkets, the amusement parks, the bedrooms and fine dining rooms and there you are; each day it’s harder to keep it up. The front becomes more and more a façade leaning on two by fours. The hair and the teeth become problematic. The gut expands. Everything you relied on is crumbling. Bring on the flesh technicians. Things are starting to hurt; bring on the flesh-cutters and the pharmacists. Nightmare...

It isn’t easier for me. The idea of the alternative however is far less attractive. Some people don’t get that if you crush out a lit cigarette on your leg that it will hurt. I get this. And I didn’t get it right off. But I get it now. I can’t attend the banquet in the big hall and party down like it’s the biggest night of the best year of my wonderful life. I know that this banquet is being held in a cemetery. I can see the grinning cadavers and what’s on the table is not what it appears to be.

There is a deep, exquisite satisfaction to standing in a garden and merely breathing. The certain knowledge that the mere repetition of a phrase will fill the garden with Buddhas is profoundly fulfilling. The knowledge that one can travel to other realms through the correct application of certain things such as imagination, faith, understanding and concentration can be exciting. The ability to see yourself as something other than a bag of flesh and blood and transiting excrements is transformative. What is it that you want?

I know that all of these things that we can want hurt us. I know that the emptiness is the fullest aspect of life. You know this too but... hey, look at that! And so on and so on. The whole idea of good and evil, freedom and bondage; all the immense subtleties of Mephistopheles and his agents here; the inner voice of guidance and the ever present refuge and sanctuary are less confusing than may appear. It’s just about the sides of your nature and your capacity to be drawn away. There’s the ‘you’ and the ‘not you’. There’s the mask and what is beneath it. There’s the two directions the desire force can move in and there’s the idea of balance (which is the basis of the work) that one must maintain or... what? Maybe it is complicated. It is very complicated if you start thinking about it. Heh heh...

I try to be careful about who I hang out with. And it is a disappointment to realize that nothing that appears to have value ‘out here’ is worth having; will in fact kill you- but you get over it. It’s rough at first realizing that in order to get to that bright and shining land you have to go in a direction opposite that of the mass and you have to smile and, quite often, keep your mouth shut about it at the same time- even though your heart may be breaking to help those who go blindly toward ever greater suffering.

The ideas that the rich are actually poor; the glutted are hungry, the powerful are cowards and so on are not popular. The idea that you should strive for what you don’t have so that your value will increase as your goods increase is very strong. It’s how we measure people’s importance, according to what they have. We are so used to thinking and speaking and doing like everyone else does, even when we are trying to be different (why not get that tattoo now?) that we haven’t a clue as to who we are or what we should do. My advice is that you should go jump in the lake. Do it today!

Monday, May 23, 2005

Well, I'm back and I expect I'll get around to having something to say shortly. I had a wonderful time and got a lot of things done. Actually, I'm pretty much always having a wonderful time and getting a lot of things done. Sometimes life is a postcard and we have to figure out what we are going to say in that small space. We want to send the card but...

It just didn't work out for me to post from afar. I could have but... I didn't.

I am sorry that so many of you tried to leave comments here and were unable to. I intentionally cut off that feature while I was gone. But you were able to reach me by email and so...

Boy, I keep winding up with these dots...

Okay, I'm going to go have another cup of tea and probably I'll get around to having something to say in the flow of it all.

Sunday, May 01, 2005

Greetings one and all; today is the day before I set out for France where I will be for most of the next three weeks. For some reason, many holiday homes don’t have phones and it follows that internet would be problematic too. The owner, who lives nearby, says we can use the internet at his house whenever we want but you know how that goes. So, looking at that and my plans for that time which include a lot of physical activity; an extended, daily sauna detoxification process, visitors from far away, a trip to Portugal to view a property I am seriously considering acquiring and the finalizing of a pretty extensive musical project, it is likely that I won’t be contributing much here. Heh heh, I’ll be lucky if I get those things done. But I will.

I’ll try to get by at least once a week. Upon my return things should even out even if focus turns to packing and moving and the vast complexity of home acquisition and financial juggling acts. It seems doable at this point though it could be squeaky too. I’m considering regular lottery ticket purchases. Writing this isn’t easy with the speakers blasting as I am reviewing and burning CD’s for commitments I must fulfill before hitting the road. Now I’ve been sitting here for a couple of minutes in an ironic exampling of just that.

Coming here and embracing the discipline of producing regular essays has been a rewarding addition to my life. I tried for a long time to practice this in another location but it was usually more akin to war zone correspondent work. It is a funny thing about life and projects and any directions a person may choose to engage themselves in or head off into that- life just seems to automatically accommodate them. There is a profound magic in concentration and application. No one thinks much about getting in their car and driving to the store for something, but it’s magic too. It seems so ordinary. Our repeating functions of eating and sleeping; our occupations and relationships, they are magic too. It really comes down to what kind of magic we get up to; what our intentions are, because life will follow them out whether they be good, bad or indifferent; though indifferent probably occurs indifferently.

The more I think about it, it becomes increasingly clear that we could accomplish most anything we wanted to if we could just decide just what that was. I think most people get bogged down by too many interests, with too little direct and consistent focus on any of them. We are made poor by a multitude of desires. Often we don’t even want what we think we want. We may not be always aware of this on the surface but a part of us knows just what we are about. One might ask, “Well what about world peace? According to you I can make that happen if I want.” Actually you can. We all live in a world of our own that inter-penetrates with all other worlds. You can achieve world peace in your world and to that degree it will influence the entire.

Not everyone has the same idea of what conditions will achieve world peace. This, itself, creates conflict. Every idea and intention we have is opposed to someone else; many someone else’s. This is why, in my mind, it is always best to align all of your ideas and desires with original intention. The one thing you do not want to be in conflict with is the divine; being in accord with the divine guarantees success in the right things and a natural forgetfulness of the rest. Again we can see where our problems come from. All conflicts arise out of a difference between the individual and the cosmic in terms of understanding and value.

One might ask how are we to comprehend the mind of the divine in terms of our personal thoughts and efforts. There are things upon which all of the major faiths agree. Surely these are a good starting point. Sometimes following the simplest rules will automatically resolve even the most complex issues.

Once again, it all comes down to whether there is a God or not. If there is a God then this God resides everywhere, within and without you; in it we live and move and have our being. This God regulates all activity according to its own absolute balance in the midst-connected to and aware of every thought, desire and action.

We hear the world around us because we are listening to it. A recording engineer hears an entirely different musical piece than the layman, even though they are listening to the same thing. A naturalist in the forest hears differently than someone out for a Sunday walk. We hear what we are listening for. We hear what we have trained ourselves to listen for. Add in the quality of our minds; a drunk hears and sees differently than one who is sober. A person of strong religious and political beliefs perceives the world very differently than one without them. One with an intense spiritual nature apprehends things differently than one with a strong religious nature. They are not the same. These things might be thought of as gases that rise up and affect perception. One with a strong objective reasoning capacity sees far more aspects to a situation than one who is subjectively inclined. Bodhisattva’s and psychopaths can both possess strong objective reasoning skills and come to very different conclusions.

What I am hoping to illustrate here is that if one were to practice listening to God, after a time one would get some evidence of God. It may be that the aperture is very narrow. The water moving through it will eventually widen the walls and the flow would increase. If one were tunneling to a location there is a constant effort toward that location. But why would one bother tunneling to a location they had no faith in the existence of? I can easily convince myself that if I tunnel under a house I can come up on the other side; mindful of obstructions of course. Some things require faith.

I’m trying to listen. I’m trying to comprehend where I am wrong as immediately as possible. If what I was after were more important that the needs and benefits of others then I wouldn’t be listening for that. I’d only be listening to and hearing what served my purposes. There you have it, ‘your’ purposes and ‘the’ purpose. This is the thing upon which our destiny hinges. Are you to become yet another example of self will set forth upon defeat, or an example of the divine will glorified within? Few people look long and deeply upon this matter. They should. Especially since the divine has their best interests in mind far more than they do. That’s odd isn’t it? That bears thinking about too.

Listening to and for God means often hearing that you are wrong and precipitous; listening to God means a sometimes uncomfortable fashioning and diminishment of ourselves. It means hearing what we don’t want to hear some times. Numerous New Testament quotes come to mind. For one who would persevere, continue to tunnel through their darkness in search of God, the rewards are incalculable; they beggar description, they transcend imagination; “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither has it entered into the heart of man, those things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”

The more that time ‘seems’ to pass, the more gratitude becomes my most constant companion. Sometimes just the smallest thing will set me off. Some mornings just a look around presents me with an aura of wonder shining from everything I see. I cannot imagine that anyone possesses anything better than this and this... is early on I think.

So, I hope you will all be nice to yourselves during my temporary absence. I’ll always check my emails when I can and I hope to visit with you again soon. Cave Dei Videt.